Smoketown: The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance by Mark Whitaker (review)

Mark Whitaker (1957–) is an extremely affable man with the demeanor of a professional journalist, which is not surprising considering that his credentials include stints as former managing editor of CNN Worldwide, former Washington bureau chief for NBC News, and reporter/eventual lead editor at Newsweek.¹ I had the pleasure to meet and speak with Whitaker directly at the August Wilson Colloquium in Pittsburgh in April of 2018. The August Wilson Society, of which I am a member, invited him to Pittsburgh to discuss his recent book, Smoketown: The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance, which mentions August Wilson, along with some of Wilson's family.

Whitaker's Pittsburgh connection begins with his grandfather, who was one of Pittsburgh's first black undertakers. His grandmother opened her own funeral parlor in the Hill District, which Whitaker wrote about in My Long Trip Home (Simon and Schuster, January 2013). Although he has traveled extensively and now lives in New York City, Whitaker still views Pittsburgh as home. In addition to those two books, he is known for his book, Cosby: His Life and Times, for which he has taken heat for "idealizing" a man who now has been convicted of three counts of sexual assault. Whitaker admits that he should have "more aggressively pursued" the sexual allegations related to Cosby, as have other journalists who depicted Cosby as a role model.²

Whitaker's main source for Smoketown is the Pittsburgh Courier, which, within its archives, provided rich information on such matters of historical interest as how black voters left the Republican Party—the party of Lincoln—and became Democrats under FDR and the New Deal; the rise of Pittsburgh's two great Negro League baseball teams, the Pittsburgh Crawfords and the Homestead Grays; as well as material on some of the finest jazz musicians of the twentieth century, including Billy Strayhorn, Mary Lou Williams, Billy Eckstine, Erroll Garner, Earl Hines, and Roy Eldridge.³

I must say that, as a journalism professor and scholar, I feel the need to point out that, considering the amount of information that was supplied by the Courier, I thought it odd that the name of the newspaper was left out of the headline or the subhead. In other words, Smoketown: The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance, was a story actually told by the Pittsburgh Courier for several decades, and while I fully appreciate the amount of work that Whitaker did to bring it all to life—all quite elegantly—the seeming omission created a disconnect for me. Perhaps this decision was made by Simon and Schuster. In terms of the writing, however, Whitaker is masterful. He is a natural storyteller and researcher who weaves a web that, when viewed from above, is, chronological, despite its regular movements through time. Anyone can read it, from smart grade schoolers to post docs.

One of the highlights of the book is the chronicling of Courier photographer Charles "Teenie" Harris (1908–98). Harris came from a family of photographers, including his older brother, George, and his uncle, William Taliaferro. The photos, which are available online through the Teenie Harris Archive, are of black Pittsburghers during the twentieth century and are categorized into "Crossroads," "Gatherings," "Style," "At Home," "Rise & Fall of the Crawford Grill," "Words & Signs," and "Urban Landscapes." The website is definitely worth a visit.⁴

August Wilson (1945–2005), who in 2001 was dubbed "The American Shakespeare" by PBS's Gwen Ifill receives attention in Smoketown. Wilson was born and raised on Bedford Avenue in the Hill District, a historic neighborhood that sits above the city of Pittsburgh that was made up of Syrians, Jews, Blacks, and other immigrants. Nine of Wilson's ten American Century Cycle plays are set on the Hill.

Being a collection of August Wilson scholars and theater professionals in attendance at the colloquium, we were specifically...